Making the case for New Glasgow

New Glasgow Mayor Barrie MacMillan says it's time to set the record straight on what's great about his town. (MICHAEL GORMAN / Truro Bureau / File)

It’s not that MoneySense magazine has been labelling New Glasgow the worst place to live in Canada ... well, not exactly.

In the previous three years, it has plunked the Pictou County town at the bottom of a list of 190 metropolitan areas it says are the best places to live in Canada.

“It’s setting the record straight,” Mayor Barrie MacMillan, said Tuesday, referring to the town’s recently launched Living Here Makes Great Sense campaign.

Its mission is to show MoneySense what a wonderful place New Glasgow is. They are doing this by getting testimonials from New Glasgow and area residents in which the citizens declare why they like to live where they do.

About 500 postcards bearing those testimonials are being mailed to the Ontario-based magazine.

Mark Brown, MoneySense’s managing editor, has already got four of the postcards. He said they are “helpful,” but they won’t affect statistical models based on “hard numbers.”

Of the the 190 communities ranked, New Glasgow was labelled 182nd for its high jobless rate, 150th for crime, 172nd for household income and 164th for population growth.

“We realize the numbers don’t give the whole story. We recognize communities like New Glasgow are beautiful places,” said Brown. “But this is an exercise in tracking the hard data.”

The New Glasgow area has had a hard few decades.

In the early 20th century, rural Nova Scotians flocked to Pictou County for good blue-collar jobs at places like TrentonWorks Ltd., and Maritime Steel Foundry Ltd. Those industries, like others around North America, have all closed.

Over recent years, the area’s police forces and social service agencies have struggled with hard drug use and the other social consequences of a lack of opportunity.

“Our community has had its share of triumphs and also some tragedies and hardships,” MacMillan said. “But throughout it all we’ve always handled ourselves with dignity and determination.”

MacMillan said he doesn’t deny Statistics Canada’s figures, but said those numbers don’t speak to the character of the people of Pictou County.

They don’t tell the tale of a community that has cared for one another through thick and thin, he said. Or tell the story of a community seeking to build a new future for itself.

The latter, MacMillan argues, paints a truer picture of a community and that is what the town is attempting to tell through its testimonial campaign.

The mayor also said the methodology MoneySense used for the survey is skewed because it included most of Pictou County’s population, but restricted services it considered to those within New Glasgow’s boundaries. That meant regional services New Glasgow residents access in nearby communities weren’t included in past surveys.

As an example, he pointed out that the Nova Scotia Community College in Stellarton, which many New Glasgow residents attend, wasn’t considered part of the town’s educational infrastructure.

With the magazine set to release its fourth ranking in its April edition, the town’s standing may not change. That’s because the data used for the 2013 MoneySense ranking is from the 2006 census and not the most recent one, done in 2011. That is because Statistics Canada hasn’t finished releasing its data from the more recent census.

However, Brown, who just took over responsibility for the project this year, said that for the upcoming 2013 rankings, the magazine is attempting to include new data such as property tax rates, home ownership and access to movie theatres and restaurants.